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Microsoft Migrates Internal Servers to 64-bit
daria42 writes "Microsoft says servers running the company's website and MSN Search and Messenger applications have been migrated to the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003. 'Our MSN search engine is actually built on several thousand systems running the x64 version of Windows,' a spokesperson said. In addition, 'the entire Microsoft.com site has been migrated, and we serve 30 million unique visitors every day.' According to the company, the Messenger servers handle about 70 million users."
I almost can't believe what I'm seeing.... Maybe it's just a coincidence but I can't currently connect to MSN Messenger (Trillian crashes) AND I can't see www.microsoft.com or use Windows Update from here in the UK!
:)
I can't imagine that Microsoft.com could get slashdotted, so maybe they're having some severe teething issues.
This doesn't bode well for the future of 64bit Windows computing
So does this mean that it is likely that Microsoft are running AMD chips in their servers?
Soo, are they running on the Opteron or the new Xeon?
'the entire Microsoft.com site has been migrated, and we serve 30 million unique visitors every day.'
Aren't they using Akamai's help in that?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I wonder how MSN search compares to Google in terms of hardware versus load. With a couple of thousand servers in place, it would be interesting to see how many queries per second MSN search can handle per box as compared with Google...
...they voided the computers' warranties.
Circumcision is child abuse.
**I don't care if it's "Windows super magic XP ME 06 tournament edition". Untill you've had enough time to see how it performs for others you keep a system you know works.**
uhh... which is EXACTLY why they're making this announcement.. so that there is "somebody" out there for it works. they're trying to boost it's acceptance you know.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Apparently, the number of servers that run messenger went from 250 32-bit servers to 25 64-bit servers. Apparently it was due to a limit in the number of network connections in the 32-bit edition
What are the "network limits" of linux, BSD, etc BTW?
"You only need to port what's necessary," he said. "If you've got a little graphic interface and it looks real pretty and it's 32-bit, that's fine - it'll run. But when you need the 32-bit addressing, the bigger data space, certainly port that into 64-bit."
s talksmuseum_1.html), InfoWorld magazine, October 2001
This reminds me of some other famous quotes:
"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed." Source: Focus Magazine, nr.43, pages 206-212, (October 23, 1995) (http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html)
"Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that" Source: Speech at Computer History Museum (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/01/HNgate
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But are all those systems actually running 64-bit hardware? If not, the announcement is pointless.
MS: "Yes, our brand new car has a beautiful high-tech hydrogen fuel cell in it!"
Driver: "But it's a diesel car..."
MS: "Well... yes.... it's actually just sitting in the back seat for now."
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
This has got to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever read.
Untill you've had enough time to see how it performs for others you keep a system you know works.
You're saying that Microsoft, with all of its expertise at hand, is going to wait for a few other companies to roll out their OS before they do, so they can see how it goes? Give me a break. And more to the point, why would anyone else use it if even Microsoft won't. Dumb, just dumb.
And they probably had far better OS utilization of the 64 bit architecture with their VMS or Unix. So what.
They also had much better capability and accuracy, allowing you to search for exactly what you wanted, not just what was most popular, allowing things like the near keyword, partial word wildcarding, and many more.
Why don't we ever hear of better search capabilities, instead of nearly-meaningless hardware shifts. The market has stagnated under Google who can't figure out how to offer even as good a search as their competitors offered at the time they launched.
Tell me something useful.
They've got to do it. If they don't make the switch, how can they expect customers to?!
If you read the original article, the server is apparently quite stable (makes sense: servers run just a few processes intensively but repetitively, and cracks would show quickly), it's the client that is more questionable:
... Lamborghini decided to get the engine of their next model be designed by kia
Anyone who is willing to switch there entire network over to something only out of beta for a few days is an idiot. It's that simple.
In fact they've running it for months, even before the RTM date. Do you have a better way to debug the OS than putting it in servers which receive 30 millions of visits each day? (They have a farm of those to serve those 30 millions, so if one of them crashes and you lose one connection is not a big deal)
BTW, OSDL did the same by putting linux 2.5 development versions in all their servers (getting uptimes of 200+ days in some cases BTW)
Before W2k was out, Microsoft migrated most internal, and everything external to W2k before it was gold. Before E2k3 was released, Microsoft was running it on all internal servers. Before W2k3 was released, Microsoft was running it on all internal and external servers. Before XP was released most workstations were upgraded to it. Microsoft has always been a very much proponent of "eating your own dog food". And yes when it goes gold Microsoft moves to that version and it's the same version sold to everyone else.
that would explain why my throwaway hotmail account (for recieving commercial email, and all the spam that ensues) was broken the last few days. I thought they had nerfed it again to break even more functionality in firefox and safari (they did that before) and I was just going to abandon it before I would ever load up msie. I just checked it today and it is working again.
More music, fewer hits
Just as a piece of trivia: Intel did want to come up with its very own 64 bit extensions, but MS basically told it that it can't be arsed to support yet another different set of 64 bit instructions. So basically the choice Intel had was squarely (A) implement AMD's set that Microsoft supports, or (B) not have any 64 bit Windows support.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms neon.winchester.local [192.168.0.19]
i now know ur IP adress, prepair 2 b h4x0red!
i will pwn ur hard drv!
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
No, actually. It is a 64bit extention to a 32bit extention to a 16bit extention to a 8bit extention to a 4 bit architecture. The Intel 4004 was actually the first one of this family. I guess you are too young to know.
Welcome to the group of sentient observers that have reflected upon this statement
Wouldn't a move like this greatly help AMD's image?
;)
If its good enough for Microsoft, its good enough for us, right boss?
Never been much into stocks, but right about now something tells me to buy.
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Technically it's not _needed_, and I'm certainly not going to argue with that.
.dll files (even if some have .exe, .vxd and whatever extensions), just like most of Linux is .so files. If you don't actually run a GUI program, they won't even be loaded.
I hope you do realize, though, that it doesn't hurt either.
1. Any library which isn't actually used, isn't even loaded. Most of Windows is just
2. Any memory page which isn't actually used, can be swapped to disc and _stays_ swapped. I.e., if after painting the desktop you don't actually run a GUI program on it, all that code to paint combos and whatnot will not even be in RAM.
So not installing a GUI would help with... what? With the few K of RAM needed to paint the clock in the tray? (Or not even that if the taskbar is set to auto-hide.)
And as opposed to... what? A typical Sun Solaris (UNIX) server also has all the GUI libraries, just in case you need to run some X stuff on it over the network. We have admins doing that every day. And that too means that they're loaded in memory when you do run graphics stuff, they're unloaded when you don't. Just like on Windows, eh?
Basically what I'm saying is: before deciding that including something is dumb, please actually do an analysis, rather than just letting your ideals of perfection do the talking. You'd be surprised how much stuff may not be, technically speaking, optimal, but nevertheless is not a liability either. A lot of flame-wars could be avoided if people asked themselves "well, exactly how much does it hurt?" instead of "is it 100% perfect and 100% optimal?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.